The Upside of Doon

Randall Grahm, celebrated winemaker of Bonny Doon Vineyard, is betting the farm on one big, beautiful idea: terroir. In his new book, Been Doon So Long: A Randall Grahm Vinthology, he shares his witty, irreverent, and thoroughly refreshing take on the making of truly great wine.

Photographer Alex Krause July 2006

Grahm is the original Rhône Ranger, the Santa Cruz maverick who introduced Rhône varietals to Central Coast viticulture in the 1980s and proceeded to produce quirky, funky wines with huge personality and distinctive, arty labels. Cardinal Zin and Big House were his high-volume hits, but his signature red, Le Cigare Volant, evinced his true Rhônish passion, as did a palette of other wines, including Syrahs, rosés, and Châteauneuf-du-Papish whites.

A technical magus, scientific and intuitive, Grahm experimented with oddball varieties and winemaking techniques. He put Muscat grapes in the freezer to create a pseudo ice-wine he called Vin de Glacière (literally “wine of the icebox”). He tinkered with cryoextraction and microoxygenation. He championed the Stelvin closure, even holding a mock-funeral proclaiming The Death of the Cork.

A playful marketeer, Grahm consigned the wine’s front labels to well-known artists, and recently bucked industry tradition by listing actual ingredients used in the winemaking process on the back labels. By 2004, Bonny Doon was the twenty-eighth largest winery in the United States.

Through it all, Grahm was writing. A self-described vinous enfant terrible, he focused a gimlet eye on pretentiousness and inauthenticity in the wine industry. His commentary made it into his winery newsletters and speeches to industry groups and UC Davis grads.

He was particularly unflinching in his castigation of the false specificity of numeric ranking systems advocated by Robert Parker and Wine Spectator, openly deploring the ratings scramble that drove winemakers to produce blockbuster fruit-bombs lacking character and nuance. This sniping didn’t win him many friends among critics, but no matter; to Grahm, the integrity of the ideas, no less than that of the wine, needed to be expressed.

But if he was hard on the industry, he was equally hard on himself. Throughout Bonny Doon’s fun, wild run, he’d been nursing an idea that there was maybe something deeper, more meaningful, to be found in wine and winemaking. “I was giving speeches and writing about terroir as essentially wine’s best idea, perhaps the only thing that was truly worthwhile and enduring,” he told me. “Yet there was nothing in my practice that supported this idea.”

He had been making what he calls “vins d’effort”—wines that bear the imprint of the winemaker, relying on technical interventions like use of designer yeasts, organoleptic tannins, dealcoholization, even wood chips. A true vin de terroir, meanwhile, relies on something more elemental and balanced: healthy vineyards, ripe (but not overripe) grapes, wild yeasts—and human restraint.

“What a French vigneron strives for is typicity—to make a wine that transparently is what it is,” he writes. Here, the winemaker steps aside, letting earth and sun and water and grape speak. The resulting wine becomes a distillation of place; place in a bottle.

The dissonance between Grahm’s output and his insights produced, quite naturally, tension: “your ordinary, garden-variety existential crisis,” he calls it. “I had recently turned fifty, fathered a child, and survived a serious health crisis. The universe was trying to tell me something: it was time to change my ways.”

He sold Big House and Cardinal Zin in 2006 and shrunk the company to focus on trying to produce true vin de terroir—from scratch. He recently closed on a 280-acre parcel in San Juan Bautista, California, about 45 minutes south-east of Santa Cruz, and has begun preparing the land for a biodynamic vineyard.

Been Doon So Long, by Randall Grahm, will be released October 9, 2009

It was also time, finally, to air the produce of his fertile mind—his essays, fiction, poetry, speeches, and meta-commentary. The result, Been Doon So Long, will be released this October.

Like a true vin de terroir, the book reveals a man who transparently is who he is: literary, clever and erudite, lavishly satirical, and enormously fond of double-entendres and raucous word play (Grahm can pun in at least four languages). It’s a dense, chewy feast for anyone who’s ever made even glancing contact with the wine industry, whether winemaker, wine salesman, wine writer, passionate blogger, or occasional consumer. It’s the kind of book you can read casually, dipping in anywhere and coming up wet from its funny, irreverent take on all things Wine.

But it’s also a book to take seriously. Reading it cover to cover, you’ll notice its structure describes an arc from ironic satire to more sober essays grappling with Grahm’s life purpose and his quest for terroir. Irony requires detachment, while terroir requires engagement. I asked him if the book’s arc followed his own. “That’s very much to the point,” he said. “I did want the progression of pieces to follow my progression: a personal journey.”

The book reveals a man who is deeply in tune with—and smitten by—the improbability, sometimes folly, and exquisite rapture of coaxing an elixir from rocky soil. His commitment to terroir is not just a commitment to an idea, it’s a commitment to a feeling.

“When you experience vin de terroir,” he says, “there’s a deep emotional connection with the wine, a feeling of wonder and deep delight and deep connectedness. And you don’t get that in tricked-up wines. You don’t get that in wines that are flashy. For me, it’s really a limbic, emotional sensation. It’s an aesthetic, or beyond aesthetic. It’s a recognition of deep order.”

And it takes time. New World winemakers are really just feeling their way, he says, and must be careful about making grand claims about producing a wine that truly expresses terroir.

“Wine is infinitely mysterious,” he says. “It can’t be reduced to point scores, or reduced to anything. It is so totally weird and surprising. The best thing we can do is protect our sense of wonder and awe.”

With Been Doon So Long, we can share that wonder, too.

— Meg Houston Maker authors Maker’s Table, a journal of food, wine, and the pleasures of the table.

About The Author

Meg Houston Maker, MA, CSW, is a writer curious about nature, culture, food, wine, and place. She’s passionate about traditional food-ways, artisanal food and wine production, and the human connection to landscape. Meg is former columnist and former Executive Editor of Palate Press. Find her essays about communications, social information, and writing on megmaker.com. Find her essays about food, wine, and the pleasures of the table on Maker’s Table. Follow her on Twitter @megmaker.

Wow, Meg. And wow again for emphasis. This article feels lyrical…which is no easy feat.

What a great tease for a book (and a life) that’s right up my alley. I think Randall’s got me beat in the science department, but I feel a kinship with his love for languages and wit.

Great explanation of terroir, too, as I’ve been struggling with what exactly that means. Sounds like an ideal whose organic time has come for American winemakers. “Place in a bottle.” Perfect.

Suffice it to say that I will be sampling both “Been Doon So Long” and Mr. Grahm’s wines. I first remember seeing him on Oprah earlier this year where he did a live tasting via Skype. I see the connection between the two now. Looking forward to his personal journey to authenticity…and snagging some of his wisdom for my own. 🙂

Todd and David, thank you. The book is a delight, and it was a privilege to speak with Randall for this article. What I understand of terroir is channeled through him; the book greatly expanded my understanding of this beautiful, complex idea. He made me love it.

Looking forward to this. I used to live a couple houses down from his tasting room in BD, when I was in college. I miss all his eclectic wines that aren’t mass produced. Livin down in the OC now, and buy grapes from all over to make my own ecletic wines 🙂 I have to credit his wines for helping to shape my palette.

Great article. Looking forward to the book, but even more so to the wines he produces within this context. I sort of lost interest in his wines many years ago. It will be very interesting to see what they are like now.

Thom

Great article. Working as a soil scientist for the last 30 years, I’ve always been intrigued (and a bit gratified) to see how much soil, and other environmental factors, affects the character of wine in all its infinite manifestations. What I am curious to see, after reading this piece by Meg Maker, is just how well the “new” Bonny Doon wines will be accepted by the market. Have we been spoiled by big Zins? What will we make of a simple, honest bottle of Wine?

Merci, Ms. Maker, for a lively, lovely piece. I particularly enjoyed your conversation on the concept of terroir — and came away with a feeling about terroir as a way of seeing and being that can be taken in on so many levels. The deceptive simplicity of getting out of the way and allowing essence to emerge. Reminds me of a favorite Galway Kinnell poem, Prayer. Maybe he was writing about terroir! Whatever happens/Whatever/what is is is what/I want./Only that./But that.

Thanks for the wonderful write-up. I met Randall about one month ago (and was fortunate to recently start working with him) and he blows my mind. He is brilliant, hysterical and truly one-of-a-kind. The launch of the new book website, http://www.beendoonsolong.com, has been an exciting time for the vineyard. We hope that everyone will check it out!

Nice piece. Just one thing, Meg–If I buy the book, will it tell me how many different grapes were in “Tutti Frutti”? I distinctly recall from the label that it contained 3% of each grape, which I presume meant there were 33…(Do I have to add that it was awful? Not all of Grahm’s jokes panned out.)

Just like any food products in the market today, wines should carry labels which are informative. Consumers deserve to know what they’re putting inside their stomachs. It’s a good thing Grahm gave importance to this.